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Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

A complement to our long-standing Shameless Self-Promotion Sundays, this thread is for links to pieces on other people’s blogs that you have found delightful memorable/provoking recently, especially those who are blogging on issues Feministe has not recently addressed (the links can be to older posts, just something you’ve found recently relevant). Please save the self-promotion links for this Sunday – use this thread to let Feministe readers know about the other blogs you love to read, especially those on the margins of the mainstream social justice communities, who tend to not get as much exposure as they should.

Guidelines:

Signal-boosting only here please ~ links you want to start a discussion on belong on the Open Thread or Spillover.

Include content notes/trigger warnings/NSFW alerts where needed as a courtesy to other readers.

Keep this thread focussed on the linking – the idea is to make your comments on the other blogs being linked! (adding relevant links for further related reading is always welcome)

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12 comments for “Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday”

Eleanor Arnason writes a post about the destruction of the Minnesota Orchestra by union-busting management here: “Musicians and Buildings.”

Besides discussing the problems for the musicians in question, she points out the general trend by the rentier class to disempower and destroy everyone and everything in their range under the guise of making a few more dollars.

One quote:
“I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. ”

Preach, sista.

Donna L

October 3, 2013 at 12:24 am

I appreciate what she said. Every little bit helps.

But she seriously, seriously downplays the extent of her past transphobia. In reality, she bought and repeated everything Janice Raymond said. And there is no truth at all to what she says about her “mutilation” comments having been limited to opposing the idea of gay men and lesbians transitioning to escape homophobia — a stereotype that people used to claim applied to all trans people. See, for example:

In light of her actual past words, her apology in this piece — saying “I’m sorry and sad if any words floating out there from the past seem to suggest anything other than support, past and present” (emphasis added) — is fundamentally dishonest, and pretty much a classic faux-apology.

Nonetheless, I hope she’s sincere. What she says is certainly better than the alternative, such as what happened a week or two ago when Zombie Janice Raymond, of all people, crawled out of the grave her ideology should have been buried in decades ago, to repeat pretty much exactly the same things she was saying in 1979, giving 30-year old examples (like the closing of the Johns Hopkins gender identity clinic) as purported evidence supporting her transphobic theories. So, yes, what Steinem said could have been way worse.

Lateef

October 3, 2013 at 4:12 am

Thanks, Donna. It’s good to contextualize this with history, about which, I am substantially ignorant.

NARAL’s recent board appointment is just the latest in a series of “OH REALLY WTF YO?” moments in an already-fractured movement, another opportunity for a more inclusive approach falling away. Their new appointee’s failures at intersectionality have been well-documented, yet these missteps haven’t stopped her ability to fail upward.

Must be nice.

Though plenty of good people are on the front lines waging wars against “-isms” daily, social media has unwittingly given birth (and a considerable amount of real estate) to a new breed of feminist agitator–one who isn’t so much invested in fighting the good fight as she is, say, getting a spot on The MHP Show. She is lively, verbose and blustery; her showmanship could put the late P.T. Barnum to shame. She is…the Performance Feminist.